I participated in a debate in City AM about this with Steven Woolfe, UKIP’s immigration spokesman.
Business
Sign of the times
China’s biggest private car maker, Geely, is not only taking Sweden’s Volvo off Ford’s hands.
It is also buying Manganese Bronze, the company that makes London’s famous black cabs.
Bad news? Hardly. With Geely’s help, Manganese Bronze is more likely to crack the huge Chinese market, now the world’s biggest.
Migrants at work
View Management Today’s website here.
Should we worry that foreign companies are taking over British ones?
On the day that India’s Tata won a bidding war for Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker that was once British Steel, I debated whether such foreign takeovers of British companies are a good thing with Will Hutton of the Work Foundation on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Listen here
CSR is irresponsible
Corporate social responsibility – it seems impossible to be against it: who wants companies to be irresponsible towards society? But words are deceptive. The premise behind CSR – that the profit motive is tainted, global capitalism is leading the world to rack and ruin, and business has a duty to give something back to society – is fundamentally flawed. And so too is the practice of it.
Inefficient markets
Peas in a Pod™
Fears that Apple aims to become the Microsoft of the music download
business by using proprietary technology to lock in the dominance of
iTunes have already attracted the scrutiny of Nordic competition
watchdogs. So it is a worrying indication of Apple’s monopolistic
intentions that it is laying legal claim to the word "Pod," threatening
to sue companies that use the word as part of their product names for
infringing its iPod trademark. It is already taking action against the
small start-up that makes the Profit Pod, an infrared scanner used to
record activity on video-arcade machines.
But lest Steve Jobs forget,
Apple did not invent the word "pod." By trying to appropriate it, he
risks alienating millions of people who were once attracted to Apple’s
apparently upstart brand, as well as fanning the fears of European
trustbusters. After all, even Microsoft has not dared to lay claim to
the word "Word."
Inefficient markets
Doha derailed — who to blame?
So much for the lofty rhetoric about freeing trade and aiding development; when it came to the crunch, governments instead bowed to corporate protectionism. Thus the Doha round — launched after 9/11 as WTO members rallied around America in a show of unity — has collapsed in acrimony, with most blaming the US for its demise. This is not fair. America was guilty mainly of being too ambitious: it offered to prune its agricultural subsidies if others sheared their farm tariffs, but India and the EU refused.
Keep out Gazprom II
My argument that Britain should prevent Gazprom, the Russian gas company that is in effect an arm of a potentially hostile Kremlin, from getting a hold on its gas market was widely criticised. But if you don’t believe me, listen to Andrei Illarionov, a former Kremlin adviser who fell out with President Putin’s team.
He says Europe must stand up to Russia’s new energy tsars by insisting on open and transparent business rules in Russia’s energy sector. Otherwise, he says, the Europeans will find themselves at the mercy of the Russian state, and so face "a cold, dark future".